back to article Official: British music punter still loves plastic

The UK recorded music industry grew 1.9 per cent last year according to the BPI, despite falls in revenue from sales of CDs and music videos. Amazingly, CD revenue fell only 6.4 per cent in 2013 year on year - and still forms the backbone of the industry. A full £365.4m out of the total of £716.8m comes from CDs and videos. …

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  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Any explanation

    Why a cd of Dark Side still costs 15quid?

    Have they recouped the mastering costs yet?

    1. Gav
      Boffin

      Re: Any explanation

      Because enough people will pay 15 quid for it, making it the optimal sale price for manufacturer.

      Stop confusing the cost of producing something with its market price. That's not how the entire capitalist system works. Cost of production is only where you start pricing something.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Any explanation

        In fact that's completely not how capitalism work...

    2. TheProf

      Re: Any explanation

      £8.78 at BASE.com, £9.30 at AMAZON.com. Perhaps shopping around might help you.

      I do wonder why the download is £10.49 at AMAZON.

    3. Amorous Cowherder

      Re: Any explanation

      Buy it 2nd hand off "fleaBay" for £1.50 (+P&P)!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Owning music on CD and vinyl

    is an insurance for me to know the music is mine, even when streaming services goes titsup or my hard drives goes crashing.

    1. Lusty

      Re: Owning music on CD and vinyl

      Trouble is that with movies, the DVD/Bluray sales are holding back content owners from selling content to streaming services. At least with music they have long since given up and have allowed DRM free downloads so we have a good choice.

    2. Killraven

      Re: Owning music on CD and vinyl

      Totally agreeing on the benefits of physical media vs downloaded. However, if the price were the same, or better, I'd be quite willing to buy lossless-format albums on some form of SD card or USB stick.

  3. Corinne
    WTF?

    "Digital recording revenue first overtook physical in 2012."

    Is this some new definition of "digital" I hadn't heard about? Back in the days when CDs were first introduced the argument was always that the sound quality on these "digital" recordings was different to that on the analogue vinyl albums. Have CDs suddenly become analogue recordings? Or are people being lazy & using the word "digital" to describe downloaded, virtual copies?

    1. VinceH

      "Or are people being lazy & using the word "digital" to describe downloaded, virtual copies?"

      Exactly that, yes.

    2. Adam Foxton

      Don't complain too much

      or they'll start calling it CyberMusic!

  4. Sir Runcible Spoon

    Sir

    It looks like they may try to force a new selling model on the streaming services.

    In a weird way I can understand where they are coming from (as far as A list titles that fans are prepared to pay more for being bundled along with everything else).

    Perhaps in the future we will see a tiered pricing structure from the streaming services. lower levels giving full access to everything but the A list stuff, and higher levels giving increasing access to more A list (i.e. expensive) stuff per month.

    I don't think I'd mind this, since it would inevitably make expensive music less popular and give more attention to gifted, yet little known, artists, whose music can still be heard for a lower price (until they get big and price themselves out of the market).

    I've always found something a bit screwy about someone making a song, and then profiting from it for every time it's heard, practically forever. I re-read my books all the time, but if I had to pay again I certainly wouldn't.

    1. mark 63 Silver badge

      Re: Sir

      " I re-read my books all the time, but if I had to pay again I certainly wouldn't."

      How about if the original purchase price was 15p instead of £7.99?

      would you pay 15p per subsequent read?

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Sir

        I, for one, won't even if it's just 1p. It's a matter of principle.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not too surprised

    There is a swathe of Britain that hasn't gone for digital downloads yet - don't understand / too fiddly to arrange on mobile phone etc etc.

    Quality/format can be an aspect, and not just for music. The most recent Doctor Who lost episode finds were released on iTunes. They don't have the interlacing that the DVD delivers. I can also get other episodes off iTunes, they don't have the value added material (eg mini-documentaries)

    And there's the "what do I get aspect."

    I buy a digital download - I get the "rights" to play it on my devices and a bunch of bits that I can copy onto my home network

    I buy a CD - I have something that I can see, loan to a friend, put on in the car, sell at a car boot if I tire of it, AND that I can also convert into a bunch of bits on my home network

    1. TheProf

      Re: Not too surprised

      The recent lost Doctor Who DVDs didn't have any VAM extras either. They were however in whatever the standard SD horizontal resolution is as opposed to the reduced count that iTunes pumped out. (Or so I've been informed. I'm not in a position to peer into the garden.)

    2. Amorous Cowherder
      Pint

      Re: Not too surprised

      I love buying CDs as the bands, the ones that actually care about their music, make a real effort to make an "experience" out of owning the recording. You get a nice inlay, lyics, sometimes access to extra stuff for download. You get peace of mind to know you have a physical backup of something if your MP3 collections gets lost

      When I ordered a CD from a French-Canadian metal band they sent me the CD, gave me access to the 320K MP3 and FLAC versions of the tracks, a couple of extra tracks that weren't on the CD and finally put my name into a free draw to win some goodies from guitarist! All that because I bought a CD direct from the band's website, you wouldn't get any of that from bloody Amazon or iTunes!

  6. ElectricFox
    Holmes

    DRM has done a lot of damage to purchasing digital music.

    See the icon -------------------------->

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Digital downloads are too expensive for what they are. Excluding brand new releases I often find a CD is cheaper. When it comes to brand new releases I find the download versions often only carry a 50p or £1 discount. A CD is much more versatile since I can convert it into an MP3 but also just pop it in any Hifi or car cd player etc.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      re: I can convert it into an MP3

      If you are some sort of pirate terrorist you can.

      It's people like you insisting on buying only one copy of a record and listening to it in many places that is killing music - well that and home taping.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: re: I can convert it into an MP3

        And transcribing Pianola rolls.. you MONSTER!

      2. sabroni Silver badge

        C30 C60 C90

        Go!

        1. Green Nigel 42

          Re: C30 C60 C90

          C120

          Snap!

      3. Joe Drunk

        Re: re: I can convert it into an MP3

        "If you are some sort of pirate terrorist you can."

        "It's people like you insisting on buying only one copy of a record and listening to it in many places that is killing music - well that and home taping."

        It's the labels that are killing music having turned it into talent manufacturing process and paying artists as little as possible for their efforts. That and the assumption that consumers would eagerly empty their wallets to pay for the same content multiple times to play on various audio equipment.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      FYI all downloads are digital, there have never been any analogue or other types of download. Everything bit of data is digital. Just say 'download' and drop the digital bit.

      1. mark 63 Silver badge

        "FYI all downloads are digital, there have never been any analogue or other types of download. Everything bit of data is digital. Just say 'download' and drop the digital bit."

        Not when I used to download from the radio onto a C90 it wasnt :)

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Analogue download = Radio1, a tape recorder, a C90 and the Sunday chart countdown.

  8. Richard Taylor 2
    Facepalm

    It is hardly surprising

    A combination of DMA and natural mistrust (hey I am paranoid) of media companies to retain your access to music says it all. Does anyone else remember the great success of those self destructing DVDs (no need to return to base). I buy it, I own it - at least I want to own the right to carry on listening to it. So for the moment, physical backup it is......

  9. JeffyPoooh

    Sometimes they're also cheaper

    Just as with physical books (delivered) sometimes being cheaper than $10+ e-books, physical CDs (delivered, or store-bought) are sometimes cheaper than buying sometimes DRM-infested MP3s.

  10. John Lilburne

    It is all packaging

    I was in Portabello Road last year and one place was displaying LP from the 60s and 70s. They wanted premium prices £100+ for the things, mostly they were selling the LP sleeves, 'cos you can pick up the CDs and mp3 for a few quid. It is doubtful that in 40 years time they'll be a place displaying CD cases with similar price tags.

    Whilst at the time us old hippies would have denied that we were buying packaging it seems that we were, and that we still do, even in the days of CDs. We still want that insert no matter how scant the extra information it contains is. Would you buy John Fahey's 'Yellow Princess' or 'Voice of the Turtle' with or without the liner notes? Given the choice would you rather Roger Dean artwork on an LP or in a CD?

    Last night I was listening to something and though damn who is that piano player, I have the CD so could quickly check it out, not so easy with something streaming.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It is all packaging

      Your logic re buying packaging is impeccable - now if only the music industry could see what is under their noses.

      I remember a radio interview long ago with a veteran performer (forget who now) who said the industry missed a trick when CDs came in. What they should have done, he reckoned, was release CD albums in LP sized packaging. Then there would still be space for a decent sized bit of artwork and an added bonus would have been that record shops wouldn't have needed to go to the expense of replacing their shelves just to be able to sell the things.

      Roll on 40 years and the advent of downloads and the same industry has again missed a trick. There is no reason why a download couldn't come with decent artwork, photographs and sleeve notes. The industry could have got together to set a standard that iTunes and the like could support.

      But they haven't.

      1. billat29

        The Price of everything, The value of nothing

        Ah! The gatefold sleeve. Weird artwork.Sometimes rude (by the standards of the day) pictures. Lyrics.

        Slide the album off the shelf, Open the sleeve and slide the record in its liner (sometimes printed too!) out.

        Careful! Make sure those fingers go on the label not on the disc itself! Use the edges to place on the deck.

        Lower the tonearm and listen for that slight crackle as the stylus locates in the groove. That "live" sound of the turntable bearing and then bliss.

        Sorry, I lost myself there.What I was going to say was that I remember that the record companies moaned at the time about how much the sleeve and its notes cost. It just shows you that they never had much of a clue about what they were actually selling.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The Price of everything, The value of nothing

          "Lower the tonearm and listen for that slight crackle as the stylus locates in the groove. That "live" sound of the turntable bearing and then bliss."

          - Well to be fair, it was the last music format on which you could skin up.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The Price of everything, The value of nothing

          Oh yes indeed.

          "And I wonder why I do not care

          For the things that are, like the things that were."

  11. Steve Knox
    Holmes

    Yeah no.

    ...CD players offer a ubiquitous and universal standard for playback...

    Someone's forgotten Sony*'s numerous perversions...

    * There were others messing with the standard as well, but Sony was the most visible, and arguably the most aggressive.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: Yeah no.

      Yes, I remember that and the rapping SONY got from the market for their shenanigans.

      Luckily for me, they were mostly "protecting" the kind of music which did not appeal to me in the least, so my PC was spared being rooted by them. However, I am still trying not to forget to hold SHIFT down when putting any new CDs into my PC.

    2. TheProf

      Re: Yeah no.

      Of course nobody who just played CDs in a CD player had any trouble with naughty root kits.

  12. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    "The UK recorded music industry grew 1.9 per cent last year"

    What ?!

    What happened to all that PIRACY ? I thought BPI/MPAA/RIAA/et al was being ROBBED BLIND by all those cheapskates who STEAL THE MUSIC.

    And yet the CD market grew.

    Man. Maybe the world isn't coming to an end after all, eh ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "The UK recorded music industry grew 1.9 per cent last year"

      Piracy has never really been an issue, they just like to pretend it is.

      Also one of the main reasons people still buy cds is because the big record labels try their darnedest to fuck the digital distribution industry every chance they get.

      1. Robin

        Re: "The UK recorded music industry grew 1.9 per cent last year"

        I'd suggest you get your sarcasm detector retuned, Anonymous.

        (That was a joke - there aren't really sarcasm detectors)

    2. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: "The UK recorded music industry grew 1.9 per cent last year"

      The music industry has been quieter about piracy recently because it wants to be loved. My advice to them is don't worry about being loved, just make yourselves useful.

      Piracy has distorted the market sufficiently to make a difference. It is just one of many factors in the overall decline. Recordings' "wallet share" began to decline in 2001, then live share increased. It's harder to get into a gig for free.

      http://prsformusic.com/creators/news/research/Documents/AddingUpTheUKMusicIndustry2010.pdf

  13. CADmonkey

    Vinyl

    There is something ritualistic and tactile about vinyl that has yet to be surpassed. It compels one to listen more actively. Even more so if you embark on a 7" binge.

    This was quite the revelation to me. I've had years of 'shuffle all' playback. These days I harvest FLACs and have spent some money on speakers etc. so the quality is there, but the listening is primarily passive. There's no anticipation, no sense of occasion.

    CDs will ultimately be destroyed by the cloud, IMO. But I bet there will still be 2.4% vinyl sales.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: Vinyl

      I would totally agree with you here. I bought 3 CD albums this year and 4 Vinyl albums: Manic Street Preacher's "Rewind The Film" and Bruce Springsteen's "Wrecking Ball" and "High Hopes", Rage Against The Machines eponymous album were all on vinyl.

      The sound, to me, is much warmer - that is the only way I can describe it. The sound of old vinyl and new vinyl both have that slightly audiable rumbling or hum in the background which makes it more real I suppose. Turn it up loud enough and close your eyes you could imagine being in the recording studio when the album was made.

      By rights, I am part of the generation that is downloading MP3's and listening to it on iPods. But in all honesty this is done for portability. I can stick the iPod on in the car or listen to the CD. Vinyl, as you say, is more of an occasion. And I'm sure we've all been there on a Saturday/Sunday evening with a 4 pack of your own poison listening to various vinyl records.

      For as long as they will make them I will continue to buy vinyl albums where and when I see fit. And if, one day, they stop making them I will continue to collect vinyl from all ages, long before I was even a twinkle in my grandmother's eye.

  14. MrXavia

    Once you have lossless downloads CD's will be less popular, but for now the real audio lover will buy CD's.

    Myself, I buy MP3's because when the source is my phone, an MP3 at high bit rates is good enough...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Once you have lossless downloads CD's will still be as popular, the real audio lover will buy to own CD's, not licence music temporarily."

      FIFY

      1. Gav

        Signal corruption.

        There are no apostrophes in CDs or MP3s.

        1. Yugguy

          Re: Signal corruption.

          Good lad. The spare apostrophe is a pet hate of mine.

    2. John Lilburne

      The CD format is crap aurally. Fortunately for most people it doesn't matter as they can't hear the difference, they can't hear the difference with an mp3 either if the truth be told. You can destroy the confidence of an audiophile with a £15 car amp, a 192K bitrate mp3 and a pair of early 70s speakers. As a HiFi magazine editor said to me the other year, with a little bit of hype you can always sell big heavy boxes to idiots for big bucks.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        they can't hear the difference with an mp3 either

        True, because due to the mechanics of the human ear nobody can hear the difference if the bitrate hasn't been reduced to silly levels.

        MP3 isn't inherently evil, it just allows for human physiology, just as "moving" pictures do with a succession of still images, and colour TV does with a bandwidth-limited chrominance signal. Sure, many people like to imagine that they can hear a difference, just as they have to convince themselves that their litz-wound oxygen-free gold-plated speaker cables are worth the silly money they paid for them. Wishful thinking doesn't make it true.

      2. Dick Emery

        You can only hear the difference if you have something to refer it against. In other words you would need the studio master to know whether a piece of spinning plastic is authentic to the original or not. That and a decent hi-fi and 'good' hearing.

        1. John Lilburne

          Same is true with photography. People will tell you that you need at least a £600 - 700 lens for macro photography. Bullshit you can it do with a £35 clip on lens. Put the two side by side in a controlled environment and yeah the £700 lens will out perform the £35 one. At the bottom of a damp ditch following some beetle up a swaying grass stalk and its all about technique, the £700 lens ain't gonna help.

          Same with audio put two bits of equipment under test and the more expensive will seem to be better. Put them both in the average living room, and you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference.

      3. DiViDeD

        @ John Lilburne RE: CD Format is crap

        Actually, the CD/Red Book format is very good indeed. The bandwidth is well beyond anything anyone can hear (unless you're half bat), there's none (ok, very very little) of the harmonic distortion that makes vinyl sound 'warmer' (on that subject, why are audiophiles so keen on valve amps? Adding distortion might subjectively 'improve' the sound, but you can add it with filters instead of buying an amp where it's already built in), and the dynamic range is colossal (~100db).

        The main problem with CDs, and pretty much all digital recordings, is that most are mastered with the dynamic range squeezed down to practically nothing. That is, the softest cymbal brush is compressed up to where it's as loud as the unmuted trumpet. To test this, check out any recently remastered old album against a CD from 20 years ago (or a good vinyl copy of the original release). You'll find a total lack of variation between passages - everything in the music is at the same volume, making for a very tiring listening experience.

        Talk to any sound engineer and they'll tell you that the music industry isn't designed for audiophiles. Its output is intended to sound REALLY LOUD on cheap equipment, and compression of the dynamic range does that. Google 'loudness wars' if you want to get seriously depressed.

        This has been going on since the introduction of the CD and the processing technology that came with them. http://www.dynamicrange.de/en/how-did-loudness-war-start has a graphic showing how dynamic range on commercial recordings has been systematically reduced in post processing since 1986

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not quite ubiquitous any more

    Warner "CDs" are not, in face CDs and do not carry the CD Audio logo. They otherwise look like CDs and cost the same as CDs, but they don't play in most computer CD/BD drives and so can't be used as a hard backup for the files you listen to on your mobile playing device of choice, or of course on the computer itself.

    I've been stung twice by this scam (and the discs did not even play in some standalone CD players) and as a result I don't buy CDs online any more as it is very hard to find out if the disc is made by WB or one of their many imprint publishers.

    This has been going on for years now.

    1. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: Really?

      What are you using to rip? I rip every CD I buy with EAC (and lame for the mp3 encoding), I definitely have some Warner ones (though probably from Taiwan if that makes a difference) and I ripped them with no issues.

    2. Maverick

      Re: Not quite ubiquitous any more

      > the discs did not even play in some standalone CD players

      in that case they don't conform to the Red Book standard - hence they can't use the CD logo most likely I suspect

      if bought online you could get your money back if in the UK/EU as wrongly described - I am guessing that the ad didn't say something like "THIS IS NOT AN AUDIO CD"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not quite ubiquitous any more

        "in that case they don't conform to the Red Book standard - hence they can't use the CD logo most likely I suspect"

        I did mention that in my post - they do not have the logo. In the end they were so cheap I couldn't be bothered with the hassle; I just stopped buying music unless I could physically see the disc box. I've seen some of Warner's responses to complaints about this and knew they wouldn't give a fuck what I thought.

  16. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    My hypothesis was and still is - streaming and MP3s and "piracy" is favoured by the "new generation" (teens, students) - they are young, impressionable, curious, love new gadgets and have no money or space to keep physical things.

    Then they grow up, get a job and money to spend and they become "old farts" who prefer to have something tangible in return if they were to part with their cash. They would probably also buy stuff that they know they like and not

    In the vast grey background there are indifferents, who have the spending power but who "consume" things like music and would go for the least hassle/least cost option at all times - streaming and DLs are easy to get, easy to delete and easy to forget.

    1. Maverick

      falling revenue nothing to do with letting the UK supermarkets do to physical medium price what Apple's iTunes did to the price of digital eh?

      wonder why they never talk about the units sold only £sales?

    2. Slap

      Well, this old fart has gone in the opposite direction. Basically at the start of last year I conceded defeat at trying to find what I wanted on CD, and started downloading from iTunes. The reason is that record shops here in Switzerland basically have the top 30 (and remember this is Switzerland so a good portion of the top 30 is made up of Hans-Ueli doing his latest covers, or DJ Bobo - the less said about him the better) plus a smattering of well known bands back catalogues

      Trying to find anything alternative was a wild goose chase, yeah sure there are alternative record stores but their mostly filled with gangsta c-rap. iTunes was effectively a god send in terms of being able to obtain new music.

      As for the quality of the sound, well I can't complain. 256 AAC VBR is transparent to my ears. Basically I can't hear the difference between that and the original CD, and I've put this to the test with some very esoteric headphone kit. One thing to note is that iTunes music downloads haven't been DRM'd for a long time now so you can do whatever you want with the file, although they do come with metadata that identifies the purchaser, but that's easy to strip.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        "is made up of Hans-Ueli doing his latest covers, or DJ Bobo"

        My goodness! My heart goes out to you. No, really....

        It's more or less the same here in the UK, though, as there are only a few physical stores left and their shelves are not infinite, so they mostly put the "bestselling" rubbish on them. The Amazon, however, has now greatly improved their range and you can find pretty rare things there very easily these days.

        For the past few years I was buying maybe 2 - 3 CDs per year but last year I had to hang a new shelf just to store all the CDs I've recently got through the Amazon.

  17. Anon5000

    Streaming

    The reason they don't make more money from streaming is....the BPI.

    UK listeners still can not get access to Pandora streaming radio simply because the BPI have demanded in excess of what is asked for elsewhere. The BPI and it's licencing are a major problem and they need a good slapping.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Plastic?

    Which torrent do I download that from ?

  19. Nifty Silver badge

    Dang, thought I'd gone vitual

    Just 2 days ago I ordered my first 'CD' as a download only and didn't bother with the physical thing.

    Had decided that CDs do clutter up the place and for mainly car/phone listening after a year or 2 the music disposable.

    Only point of note is, for just £2 extra I could have had a CD brought by postman. Profit on downloads only must be humungous.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > The concern for artists and some labels is that streaming provides a fraction of the revenue of a digital download.

    There's a good reason for this. The value of the thing obtained is much less. It is more akin to listening on the radio than getting a copy which you can listen to multiple times.

    CD and vinyl have a higher intrinsic value being both physical and they have resale value.

    That music sellers feel that they can command high prices for something as ethereal as a one-time listen is a total misunderstanding of the value that people place on things.

  21. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    Can't say I blame 'em - vinyl seems to have more oomph than digital no?

  22. Richard Lloyd

    CDs usually better value for money

    I've found that CDs are often cheaper than equivalent MP3 downloads, but it should be noted that some online stores (iTunes, I'm looking at you) including "exclusive bonus tracks", which effectively make the CD less desirable.

    What MP3 downloads did kill was the CD single - this used to be a great medium: 4 different tracks for 99p/1.99 pounds or 8 remixes for a similar price. Of course, this was far too much like value for money and the music industry destroyed CD singles by halving the max tracks allowed and often doubling the price.

    The CD vs. MP3 situation isn't that much different from the e-books vs. hardbacks - you can often find the hardback the same or cheaper price than an e-book, which is scandalous overpricing for the electronic version (whilst usually including onerous DRM to cheese you off even futher).

  23. Green Nigel 42

    Try before you buy.

    Been doing it from borrowing & sometimes recording mates Lp's, copying singles off the radio on to Cassette, to rummaging around You Tube, ( now to check if I really want the Cd of my old Vinyl). In all cases the act of borrowing/copying has resulted in an introduction to new artists & future purchases.

    The thing is, there is evidence to support that freedom to lend, borrow, record & rip has been benificial financially & expanded the market of the music industry, Big corporate labels DRM & copyright have not.

    Downloads now appear to me lack this type of portability, ( DRM gone but still a painful memory). Add to this its apparent fragile, low quality (lossy MP3 & digital remastering) & temporary nature (inherited vinyl of 40 aged 40 years & is still playable, a bucket load of 3 year old dead hard, flash drives & players). I can see the compact portability benifit Mp3's, but the cost outlined above, the additional time needed to maintian a viable backup, transfer to new equipment & that the big labels like it, all put me off big time!

  24. Duke2010

    Back to CD

    I used to buy loads of digital dowloads but then I bought some decent speakers and headphones so I have started to buy CDs again for the higher quality. I can now actually hear the difference (Not always but on a lot of tracks).

    Its about time the main sellers started offering lossless formats, that would bring me back to digital. Charging people for a second rate MP3 when there is Flac and Alac is a real shame.

    There are some places like HDtracks but they have a very limited library and are very expensive. I use Beatport for some music as they offer Wav and Aiff but again their library is limited (unless you want House then they have everything!).

    1. Green Nigel 42

      Re: Back to CD

      MP3 will remain the dominant download format as long as people continue to buy the flashy cheap low quality audio systems as they always have, (always seams to be the girls who do this, including my wife who wants it to match the decour first!). The Hifi system I built back in the mid 70's still serves me well & only have added a Cd deck. Its prime purpose is to be audably transparent & let all the music through (thou wife would like it tobe invisible too !) Checking out new equipment, my ears have not found anything within my budget that would improve on it & can easily tell the difference between Mp3, digital remastering & the superior Cd (unremastered!)

  25. graeme leggett Silver badge

    I buy downloads because:

    One or more of the following

    *availability - can't be readily got anywhere else

    *highly discounted against CD price

    *only need a track or two from an album

    but mostly because

    *someone gave me an iTunes or google Play voucher for my birthday.

  26. Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance
    Megaphone

    Vinyl will be with us for a while

    First off, it is physically impossible for a human being to distinguish between the 'best' mp3 encoding and the original file. Notice how I didn't say 'source'. Of course a live band sounds different to the recording coming out of the speakers in the studio as they record or master Dark Side Of The Moon.

    So, you are fine with mp3 which is a lossy format, but then again Ogg offers the same quality at even smaller sizes of compression. Flac is of course a lossless format, but there will be some idiot who argues that vinyl sounds better.

    I know that lame - the best encoder - used to do this as standard at 128kbps, but they probably still do and maybe for different bit rates too. The info is out there if you care to look. As an audio engineer, I know when to use my eyes and when to use my ears. I use the Voxengo Span plugin in a freely available audio editor such as Wavosaur or Audacity, after placing it in my VST folder, when I want to look at the frequencies. But you mix with your ears which are hard coded and your brain which is soft coded. So you can train your brain but if your ears are physically damaged or you are getting on a bit, you're SOOL. I also can't hear anything over 15/16KHz, but that is average for my age, and lucky to have that considering.

    Anyway, the developer of FLStudio got called out on this when someone ran all of the mp3s they encoded through an analyser and noticed that they were brutally HPF'd at 17KHz. He admitted writing this into the spec as 'no one can hear that high anyway'. And even if you were a kid and could hear that high it is a very very unpleasant frequency. They make those kid defender bat screechers don't they that they put outside chip shops to see off all the young punks and stop the mods and rockers clashing. You might have heard of them. But you probably won't have HEARD one.

    When the CD came out, people were blown away. Indestructible they cried. No hiss they proclaimed. No goddamn scratches and warps shouted others. Also not as heavy to carry as much music as before, physically. Ok, you couldn't dj on them at the time, but still. More than one or two people sold their entire vinyl collection when moving house, only to replace the lot on CD, justifying it to the wife as, well it will save some space darling.

    One of the greatest and best sounding albums ever recorded - Slave To The Rhythm by Grace Jones - was actually mastered at 14 bits, not even using the full 16 bits that was soon to become the standard. Nobody complains about the quality of that recording. And so it came to pass, and so it was burned to CD, and lo, how they did rejoice: 'All hail the CD, all hail the CD'. The future had arrived.

    But the djs who themselves still had to lug around their vinyl to do gigs and were understandably bitter still said 'vinyl sounds better'. That was back in the day. And a lot of them are still saying the same thing now. My mind is not made up on this one. There probably is a reason why vinyl sounds different, apart from 'analog warmth'. And anything that the human brain can perceive to be different it can perceive to be better. As long as the record is not scratched and it is played on a good system, I'm sure vinyl does give it a run for its money, but saying it has more low end or whatever is missing the point. It is not supposed to have more low end. If God, sorry the producers/mix engineers had wanted it to have more low end, they would have mixed it into the track which would have then been played back faithfully by a digital clone reproduction on a 'transparent' system. Sheesh, so easy to run rings around these hi-fi idiots. They just don't think right. As has been displayed by people selling a frigging usb cable for 500 quid, and people buying it. Sadly I am not joking. But enough of that argument. It's been done to death.

    Take a look at labels like Astrophonica. I don't know if they are even still going, but I watched a video of them on youtube (Fracture and Neptune) doing a little master class on making a toon, mastering it and running a small label. Great stuff. If you like high quality Drum and Bass they do it very well. And it is because of people like this, slogging on for little to no reward that vinyl will not go out of fashion in our lifetime. DJs still love to use vinyl. Ok, they can use CDs now, but if you think Armin My Armchair would be seen dead 'spinning' a CD you sadly don't know much about the 'Glory Boys' of the current music biz. They even fly around it jets and things. Lots of money still to be made from the punters. Clubs and dancing will not go out of fashion in our lifetime. The government killed of the real thing of course - nipped it in the bud with their true policemen - the gangsters who killed the scene. It's been dead pretty much since the beginning of the millenium, but that is another argument.

    Kids today like to listen to crap music by crap djs. They like to get off their little numb skulls on crap drugs in crap places to escape their crap lives. I could quote HST here about how there was a time when if you looked a certain way when the waves rolled back. But luckily for you I won't.

    Today's music has, to quote the great Dave Pensado: Had the dog piss squashed out of it. Well I'm paraphrasing actually, but none the less. It is all about Dynamic Range, not the BITS. Be that Bit Depth or Bit Rate. Remember Slave to the Rhythm being 14 Bit? Then pressed to a 16 Bit format? 16 Bits is MORE than enough for playback. It is not enough for RECORDING because whilst wholly adequate if you are careful and watch your levels, 24 Bit gives you more headroom and is more forgiving and quicker and easier to work with. One masters down to 32 Bit to send to the mastering houses. And all the shenanigans that go inside your DAW are at 32 Bit/64 Bit now anyway for reasons of floating point calculation accuracy or sommat. That and a bit of Mojo. And once one proclaims '64Bit' they will all be at it lest to be seen losing the arms race. But there are sound reasons for using 24 bit for Recording. Some can even make an argument for going up to silly levels like 96KHz or more, but again, I will leave them to it because it is all very techy stuff and for Recording. There have been some very convincing arguments made as to why you would never want or need to go above 16 Bit - 44.1KHz for PLAYBACK. Again to do with the mechanics of the human ear, General Physics Theory and even a bit of common sense. Inter Modulation Distortion is one of those arguments. Again, it's all out there if you want to spend years educating yourself, or even five minutes.

    http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

    Today everyone wants their music to be the loudest. And surely enough, the reason why the music on soundcloud sounds crap even if it not is because they have used a limiter to reduce the dynamic range and push the levels up to almost the point of white noise. Nearly everyone does this, because when you first make a track, you don't send it off for mastering, you do it yourself and you notice it is not as loud as everything else, so you learn about compression and limiting and then squash the dog piss out of it. And after spending 300 quid on that nice new shiney software limiter - sure you want to be pushing it another couple of dB, right? So it is people not knowing what they are doing, but it is more than that. So many very talented and capable engineers just argue that that is where they stand on the side of the loudness wars. If music sounds crap today it is because, well, it sounds crap, never mind the music. It is fatiguing to listen to for more than three minutes.

    When I put a track up at soundcloud, it is not quite as loud as the other stuff, but in my music, you can hear it rise/fall, ebb/flow. You can't with their music. You might not like my music and you will have to 'turn it up' a bit. But that is the whole point. When you do turn it up it sounds great. When it is a square wave the human tendency is to actually turn it down. I can still make a relatively loud track though, because even I am not Pink Floyd and making a bit of Drum and Bass or Dub, I only need so many dBs of Dynamic Range. Everything else is fair game. The loudness war has been fought and lost I'm afraid and there are only us straddling pathetic hippies wandering around with a dazed expression on our faces, saying 'why did they hit me? I'm a pacifist!'.

    TL;DR

    Vinyl is expensive to produce, it is hard to take care of, and it probably does NOT sound as good as a CD depending on your criteria. But it is not going anywhere. It will just become more boutique and desirable. For every fuckwit that spends 500 quid on a usb cable for his 10K quid CD player, there will be 20 or more that stretch to getting a bit of plastic fantastic into their lives. And they don't sound half bad either when pressed properly, but as any small label producer will tell you, it is hard enough getting a decent ME (Mastering Engineer) to finish your tracks off, let alone finding a pressing plant that is not going to press a 1000 or possibly 500 minimum run, up in the middle of the night and you go pick them up in the morning only to later find that all that hard work, time and money and creativity, actually sounds like it's being played back on a 19th Century Gramophone, even with your oxygen free, platinum coated 500 bucks usb cables. You pays yer money, you takes yer chances.

    Btw, what is the Bit Rate and Bit Depth of a Vinyl Pressing? Never thought about it before. Don't have a record player.

  27. Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance
    Facepalm

    I know that lame - the best encoder....

    "I know that lame - the best encoder - used to do this as standard at 128kbps, but they probably still do and maybe for different bit rates too."

    Sorry, I got a bit carried away there and had to edit my post down from the 10,000 limit - that bit got lost in the translation...

    I was talking about the lame encoder using a LPF (Low Pass Filter) to cut everything in the audio frequency spectrum above 17KHz. There, should make sense now.

    Sorry 'bout that.

    I only went off on one because despite being constantly corrected by people that actually know what they are talking about, people still seem to want to propagate this myth that mp3s sound crap. They don't if recorded and encoded properly, which I went to some lengths to explain why, and why that the best mp3s are indistinguishable from CD. I know that other people corrected them before me, but this time I thought I might go to some lengths to explain why.

    In fact, even in the audio world, an awful lot of people think they know what they are talking about when they do not. I only have a very average understanding of these things at best. But like any good scientist, I don't try to explain things I understand. And unlike most people who talk crap on this subject, I know when I don't understand. This thing has been explained so many times now it's not funny.

    Honestly, don't listen to me, look up the science on the subject and if you still think you can hear the difference between the best encoded mp3 and a CD or Flac, then the scientific community would love to hear from you. There's money to be made in the freak show! Oh and those usb cables costing 500 quid? The same thing. If you can tell the difference between that and the one that came with your cheap HD, then again, the world eagerly awaits you. Because they don't and you can't. FACT. Scientific fact.

    And this is coming from someone whose mind is very open. I did a track yesterday and as I cut off the low frequencies with my HPF (High Pass Filter - the opposite to what the lame encoder is using), it actually brought out more high frequencies from the bass, which is impossible. But even in the audio world there are illusions. There must have been a good reason for this appearing to be this way, but I've no idea what it was. Illusions are one thing though and reality is another.

    Then again I don't suppose this BS will ever go away, most musicians do not understand this and keep spouting this crap. Hell, even audio engineers, because they think it makes them sound like they are the ones with the Golden Ears, and if you can't hear it, it must be because you are a drummer or something.

    Jesus, I'm getting carried away again. I'd better stop.

    Anyway, I still want to know the bit rate and depth of a bit of vinyl!

    :-)

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who the F' needs CDs, and why buy inferior MP3's at similar/greater prices to CD tracks!

    All my many bought CDs were ripped ages ago to loss-less Flacs on my NAS, because CDs are a pain; the Flacs can later be transcode to a lossy format for those retarded devices (many Android ones!) which still don't support Flac!

    CDs are a space wasting rip-off, so I stopped buying them; haven't these retards heard of Flash memory and fair pricing? Flash is so very cheap now! No CDs are not immortal; this is another part of the reason I use a NAS, is because CDs have been proven to rot in the wrong conditions, or with handling/time.

    Anyone who sells tracks as MP3's close to CD track prices, but does not sell them as Flacs, frankly does not deserve customers, and deserves "damage avoidance". I have to avoid damage lots.

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